


in the rear view mirror (all I’ll ever know)

by arielchan



Series: on the run [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-16
Updated: 2011-12-16
Packaged: 2017-10-27 09:51:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/294420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arielchan/pseuds/arielchan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Most of the people Tony dealt with in boardrooms and convention centers were idiots, and Bruce Wayne, well, he was an idiot too, but at least he was interesting.</i></p><p>A story that was about making Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne friends, but then got completely derailed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the rear view mirror (all I’ll ever know)

**Author's Note:**

> Betas: civilbloodshed and doitninetimes on LJ, with bonus thanks to anyone who fielded questions from me via text.
> 
> This is 100% movie-verse for Marvel. The Batman side is comics-influenced but will make sense without knowledge of DC comics outside of the basics. Timeline on this is post- _Avengers_ , and on the Bats side Dick has just recently found out everything and started wanting/training to become Robin.

Tony had always liked business meetings that involved Wayne Enterprises far more than any other meetings he was forced to attend. Most of the people Tony dealt with in boardrooms and convention centers were idiots, and Bruce Wayne, well, he was an idiot too, but at least he was interesting.

Most of the idiots liked to talk about profit margins like they knew what that meant, and then divert into talking about golf or their golden retriever’s pedigree or some utter bullshit like that. Bruce Wayne didn’t pretend he knew anything. Bruce Wayne fell asleep in meetings when he remembered to show up at all, and his usual contribution to the discussion was more likely to be a vaguely offensive pun than a blatantly false generalization about modern technology. So, although Tony had never managed to talk Bruce into socializing outside of business negotiations, he liked him.

Tony liked him even more now that he was standing in the massive ballroom of Wayne Manor, discovering that Bruce had this unfortunately-named kid. “My ward, Dick,” Bruce had said, introducing them, and Tony had barely managed to hold his tongue on a series of obvious jokes. Then Bruce had swanned off with a glass of champagne in one hand and the hand of some lithe, champagne flute-shaped woman in the other. Tony couldn’t imagine any authority deciding that Bruce Wayne could be responsible for a ten year-old, but money did have a lot of advantages. Peeing in the Iron Man suit that time had probably ruined any chance Tony ever had of randomly adopting some kid off the street, which was something he didn’t consider a great loss before meeting Dick.

The kid liked Tony, too, and he was really enthusiastic about it. He said words like, “Gosh” and “Gee”, and Tony liked that as well. He kind of wanted to take him home just for that, introduce him to Steve and listen to them go “Golly!” and “Gee willikers!” at each other for hours on end. Dick would like Captain America, judging from the way his face lit up while telling Tony about one time when Superman had rescued Bruce and Dick had gotten to meet him.

Dick was also asking Tony a lot of questions about the Iron Man, which was pretty typical for the rare occasions when people trusted Tony Stark near their children, except every once in a while there’d be a question stuck in there about hardware or specifications for the suit, and _that_ made the kid even _more_ interesting.

So now Tony Stark, billionaire playboy who could be getting very drunk and very laid right now if he so much as smiled in the right direction, was at a party full of beautiful women in form-fitting dresses and wealthy men in tailored designer suits, talking to a boy who was too young for even Rhodey to feel comfortable making jailbait comments about. The _interesting_ questions were timed along a pattern that Tony had noticed pretty quickly.

“Gee, Mister Stark,” Dick would say, all wide-eyed and totally refusing to call him Tony. “Did you really take on a whole ship full of aliens from Carrea on your own?”

“Well, mostly. I mean, Hawkeye tried to help a _little_ , but a flare arrow just doesn’t have the same firepower as the repulsors.”

“That is so cool. None of the guys at school will believe I got to meet you!” Dick was bouncing on his toes slightly. “I’ve been wondering, though... In order to make the repulsor beams, do you use a synchroton particle accelerator or a cyclotron?” The kid was either incredibly earnest or an Oscar-caliber actor with the way his face never even twinged spitting those words out.

It was stroking Tony’s ego, so he’d probably have kept talking to the kid regardless, but he was also engaged in this little game, trying to figure out where these questions are coming from.

Did Bruce accidentally adopt himself a miniature genius, or was this being engineered? It could be that the kid just had an interest in engineering and technology, or he could have been coached by someone - Bruce? - to get the information for other reasons, like corporate espionage.

The latter idea was especially interesting because it meant someone had decided Tony would open up to a wide-eyed kid instead of trying to seduce him with a leggy blond like they usually did. Then again, if it just happened that Dick was secretly a brilliant mechanical mind, well, he was probably starving for some real challenge after spending most of his free time with “Brucie”.

Tony was still trying to feel out how much of the curiosity was really coming from the kid when the thugs kicked the door in and then threw a couple canisters of knockout gas into the ballroom. Tony dove instinctively, then glanced over to find the kid already on the floor beside him, his jacket lapel covering his mouth and nose. Tony flicked his eyes over at the nearest covered table, and then slithered over to it on his belly with the boy crawling after him.

Pepper was under the table, of course, with Tony’s briefcase. “Mister Stark,” she said placidly. “I see you made a new friend.” Her voice was polite, but her eyes clearly said, “Anthony Edward Stark, I saw you talking to this impressionable youth all night, and I want to know what the hell you are up to.”

He knew she’d get it out of him later. Meanwhile, he pasted on his most charming smile. “Ms. Potts, this is Dick, um-”

“Grayson,” Dick said, reaching around Tony to take Pepper’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m sorry the party’s been crashed. It’s one of the hazards of living in Gotham.”

“I kind of like it. Bad guys never crash my parties in New York.”

“Tony, you live with an internationally-known team of superheroes.”

“Right, that’s right. Still, this is exciting, isn’t it,” he stretched out his hands for the briefcase before Pepper said something sarcastic about prioritizing. “I just love mixing business with pleasure.” He flipped the case open, stuck his hands in, and pulled the portable suit into place, watching Dick’s eyes widen. He made a mental note to spend more time around people who hadn’t seen the suit before. His friends just weren’t impressed enough after watching Avengers training exercises on a regular basis.

Suit latched onto all the important places, Tony gave Pepper a two-fingered salute. “I’ll be right back, really. You won’t even notice I was gone.” And then he slid out from under the table and threw himself into the air.

The thugs, who had been in the process of divesting sleeping beauties of their valuables, stopped. Iron Man was not on the list of things they’d planned for. Tony landed in the middle of the ballroom, and one of the thugs (Tony had to give these Gothamites points for guts) broke from the others and charged at him with nothing but a crowbar. Tony grabbed the crowbar mid-swing above his shoulder, and so did another hand, black-clad.

The thieves went white, dropped their goods, and ran like they’d suddenly remembered they left the stove on at home. Tony turned to find him face to face, bare inches from Batman, and lifted the Iron Man mask.

“Man, Bats, you do make an impression on your people down here, don’t you? They didn’t react to _me_ like that. Then again, I’m not sure I’d want them to. Doesn’t sound like much fun if everyone just runs off when you show up.”

“Leave,” the Batman growled. “Before I make you.” And then he was gone.

Tony just shook his head and took off the rest of the suit, then headed over to start opening windows to help air any remaining gas from the ballroom. The third window he hit stuck halfway, and suddenly Dick was beside him, helping to push it up. “I don’t know how often Alfred opens these,” he said. “I’ll let him know this one needs to be oiled.”

“Thanks. Sorry you didn’t get to see much action there,” he added. “But Batman, hey, that’s pretty cool, right?”

The kid shrugged and shook his head. “Gotham. Between you and me, I’m a little bored of Batman. I feel like I see him every day... practically.”

Pepper joined them at the windows, having emerged from her hiding place and straightened her hair, and within a few minutes they had finished their rounds of the room and every window was standing open.

“Well, kid,” Tony said, looking around at the people on the floor who were just beginning to stir. “Thanks for the help. Time to get you back to Daddy, um... Where is he?”

Dick looked around and laughed. “He probably took off before those guys even got here, and hid off somewhere else in the manor. He gets a little bored at these businessy parties where pretty much everyone is old or married.”

“Tell me about it. Well, let’s go questing.”

“He’s not my dad,” Dick said suddenly as they set off through the big double doors and down the hallway. “He’s more like a buddy, really. My parents died.”

“Yeah? Mine too.”

They found Bruce in the study, already in his dressing gown, feet propped up and a newspaper spread out on his lap. “Tony! Dickie,” he exclaimed. “Is everything alright?”

“Oh, fine,” Tony said, picking up a decanter of amber liquid from the sideboard that caught his eye. “May I?” Bruce nodded. “There was a little incident, but your guests should all be waking up about now. Luckily, I was there.... and Batman too, I guess. Your friendly neighborhood superhero isn’t exactly Mister Smiles.”

“Batman doesn’t like other heroes in Gotham,” Dick said. “That’s what Superman told me, at least, when he saved Bruce that time. Batman sees Gotham as his burden alone.”

“Well, I can’t imagine trying that in New York or L.A., but more power to him, I guess,” Tony said. The study was nice, homey. Tony took a big swig of his bourbon. There was a huge antique grandfather clock at the back of the room that seemed to have stopped. It looked off, somehow, broken but so clean, and shouldn’t Bruce be able to get that clock working if he wanted to? Tony could probably fix it.

“You work with a team,” Dick said suddenly, standing in front of Tony and pulling his attention from the clock. “Do you think Batman would be better off working with other heroes?”

“Oh, probably. I mean, I don’t always like my team, and I sure don’t like living with them most of the time - you don’t know the meaning of ‘rude awakening’ until you’ve been woken up after only a couple hours because Thor threw his hammer through the living room wall and into the Hulk’s bedroom - but we probably accomplish a lot more as a team than we would if we all just squatted on the architecture in our own individual cities.”

“So you think Batman would be better off with a partner,” Dick was smirking now, and that was curious.

“Yeah,” Tony joked. “But who would ever work with that guy?”

The party was over. The guests were slowly picking their valuables from the piles abandoned by the thieves, some stopping to pat Tony on the shoulder as they shuffled out to their limos, but most just ignoring him, like they were embarrassed that this disheveled, casual guy had saved them, and man, Gotham really was nothing like New York. The only thing that was really the same was the reporters, making Tony squint while he waved to the cameras. He wasn’t sure if the Batman would like it, but it had seemed easier (and shinier) to take full credit for the rescue instead of explaining his first ego-bruising encounter with their local celebrity.

“I love going to meetings with Bruce Wayne,” Tony told Pepper as they settled into the car and Happy slid into the driver’s seat. “Seriously, why are we not better friends?”

“I thought you spent all night talking to his kid instead?”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “He’s a bright kid. I kind of want one for myself. What do you think, Pep - would I be a good dad?”

Pepper’s face softened a bit, in that way that Tony loved but rarely got to see without nearly dying first. “Yeah,” she said. “Actually, I think you’d be a really good dad, Tony.”

Tony leaned back into the seat for the long drive home, closed his eyes, and smiled.


End file.
